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Houston Nutt

With the firing of Houston Nutt (and I was years ahead of the mob in
calling for his firing, by the way), new coach Bobby Petrino came in
with high expectations from the fans for a dynamic aerial assault. What
we got was a 5-7 team with a defense that gave every other team a great
opportunity to pad its offensive stats. While the sports columnist of
the statewide daily and the marks on the Internet paint a
sunshine-pumping picture, let’s be honest that Petrino’s first year
was not a success. In my annual tradition, it’s time to let the grades
roll on Petrino…

If you were/are one of the people who hated Houston Nutt, this is vindication Saturday.

The Razorbacks face Ole Miss this weekend, and it will be the hardest ticket to get in Fayetteville since Texas came to town in 2004 to hand the Hogs a two-point loss, which is appropriate since Ole Miss will now assume the mantle as Arkansas’ chief rival and the game that the fans circle on the calendar. “Ole Miss Week” can’t be far behind if the coming circus even comes close to living up to its billing.

While the Petrino surrogates in the media would like you to believe otherwise, this may be the 100-year flood for Razorback football ? it is one of the worst teams fielded by the University in a century.

Yet what did we hear after the horrendous loss to Florida, a loss in which yet another team covered an embarrassing three-touchdown spread on Arkansas (with a touchdown to spare added by Florida)?

So it starts. On the always entertaining “Fifth Quarter” call-in show on 103.7 on Saturday after the Razorback embarrassment to Alabama, the hosts brought up the topic of play calling. If you have nothing else to talk about after getting beat 49-14, then why not question the coach’s play calling? It is something Arkansas sports fans are very good at. But play calling was not the only problem on the field, by far.

Looking forward…Petrino hopes the old cliche about the most improvement comes between weeks 1 and 2 is true. Also, the last time Louisiana-Monroe opened the season with trips to Auburn and Arkansas (2004) the Warhawks lost in a shutout to Auburn and was blown out the next week by the Hogs. Auburn shut them out again this week…Will history repeat itself?

Like a lot of places on the field, the Arkansas Razorback football team is depleted at linebacker. If you have read anything about the preseason so far, you know that fact. I got worse over the last week with Elston Forte and Ryan Powers both nursing injuries. Freshmen will have to fill part of the void at this position, but we all know that won’t work unless one of them is Hardy Nickerson.

The good news, however, is that linebackers are not as important as they once were unless you’re playing Houston Nutt. In this pass-happy world of score, cornerbacks and safeties now have become equally as important. The Razorback coaches, and I don’t know who half of these people are, have been rather reserved talking about how they’re going to fill this void at linebacker, and for good reason ? they have no idea.